Practice Advice

CBT for BDD

Dr Anna Smith is a chartered clinical psychologist and CBT therapist, and principal clinical psychologist in the Anxiety Disorders Residential Unit. She obtained a doctorate in clinical psychology at the IOPPN in2008 before doing specialist training in CBT following year. During this time, she worked in Southwark IAPT and the Centre for Anxiety Disorders and Trauma at the Maudsley Hospital before taking up the therapist position in ADRU. She became the manager and principal psychologist in 2014. She also has further specialist training in compassion focused therapy and has spoken at several international conferences.

Anna is passionate about providing good treatment for BDD, and has interest in teaching mental health professionals, both those working in clinical services and those on training courses. She believes strongly that clients should be given access to good CBT for BDD. However, many therapists do not feel confident in working with this condition and Anna hopes help therapists to feel confident that they can work with clients who present with appearance related concerns. She also has an interest in specific phobia of vomiting and has developed a protocol to treat this condition using virtual reality to simulate the experience of vomiting, both to work as an exposure stimulus and to help individuals re-script previous traumatic experiences of vomiting.